Beneath the Armor
by pagerunner
Summary: Shepard's got a lot on her shoulders, and very few people she'd trust enough to take the weight. But Thane's willing to take everything he can. Thane/Shep, ME2-era.


Shepard doesn't give up control often: not in command, not in battle, not in her personal affairs. Those who love her and support her understand. They _need_ Shepard as she is, as the leader and unstoppable force.

But Thane knows better than most that sometimes, just sometimes, she'll let her guard down.

When he sees the weight of everything is too heavy on her - or in these rare few moments that she'll ask - he'll come to her, and slowly, inexorably, break her down, because she can't just let herself let go. It takes… persuasion. And so while his hands may be his best weapon, he begins with just his voice. "Siha," he murmurs, letting her feel every reverberation as he steps up close behind her in her cabin. He wants to softly urge her into quiet, to let all else but this moment go. It may take time. He's prepared to wait. "Even the warrior angels cannot maintain such a pace forever. You must be gentler with yourself."

Her voice is wry, almost bitter. "But how can I stop-"

"You can. Let it go. Just for a little while."

"Thane-"

The tone of his voice goes lower and more seductive, makes her shiver. "Siha. Trust me."

It's then that he starts touching her. His hands begin on her shoulders, warm and steady. He leaves them there while he murmurs something soft and wordless, listening for a reply; her echo of it is still too tight. So he strokes his palms down her arms, resettling at last on her waist to pull her closer.

"Thane," she says again. This time it's less of a protest. Her head tilts back, and he lets his fingertips tug up the fabric of her shirt. And now that his intent is clear, Shepard _focuses_ - but almost too fast. She tries to twist her hips against his, and _that,_ he stops with a grip of his hands. He's not letting her drive this one. Not this time.

Instead he carefully turns her around. Her eyes are wide, lips slightly parted. Color's starting to rise in her cheeks. Thane says nothing more just yet. It's a fine line: with the mood she's in, he has to be convincing but not too forceful, and not let her be too reckless. Sometimes she likes to push the more predatory side of him, but this doesn't seem to be the right time; her tone is still just this side of desperate, colored with the pain and stress of these last few days. So Thane just holds her, standing close, and lets her hear him again. It's a low, sensual reverberation deep in his throat, and she moans when she hears it, because she knows what he means….

But he's going to take it slow.

He's still humming, soft and encouraging, as he tilts her chin up with one hand. He barely needs to; she's already straining for the kiss. It's why he meets her off center, kissing the corner of her mouth, beside her ear, down her neck. She smells like sweat and gunfire and electric tension, and when his tongue slips out to taste her skin, she arches against him with an exquisite moan. Her hands grip him harder. Shepard's still trying to push him to go faster, but there's also a different sort of tension in her now. Anticipation.

He answers it with disengaging just enough to pull her shirt over her head.

Shepard's smirking once she pulls free, like she knows how this is going to go. He watches her shake out her hair, enjoying the brush of it when she gets too close, and allows her just a few seconds of tugging at his jacket before he stops her. "Ssh," he says. "Let me, first." She looks briefly confused, but after a touch to her hair, then letting his hand slide back down to cup her cheek, she begins to subside. Thane breathes as deeply as he can. Steady, he thinks. Steady….

Slowly, he drops his hand and slips a finger beneath the strap of her bra.

He wants to take his time at this - enough to make her want more, and in a selfish but satisfying way, to enjoy the reveal. He deliberately tugs her bra free, showing her tightened, pebbled skin, and touches her lightly there before drifting lower. Her stomach muscles tremble when he undoes her trousers and begins sliding them off her hips. He can tell from her scent that she's wet already, still untouched… but for that, he'll wait. He just breathes her in, hums again with approval as she steps out of her clothes, and watches her as she watches him, evidently wondering what's next.

Thane catches her hands in his before they can wander, marveling at the soft skin of her palm and the terribly sensitive spot in her inner wrist. He lifts one arm, kissing her there just to feel her gasp and her pulse jump. Then he looks at her. Really looks at her. She's staring back, but there's something a little different in it now.

Perhaps it's because he's let her go to start removing his own clothes.

He has to admit, he's being a tease. Slow flicks of fasteners and tugs of zippers and little reveals here, there… oh, she's _itching_ to touch him. He rather wants her to ask for it. What she _does_ is to sidle forward to take her turn as she will, slipping her hands under the collar of his coat and helping push it off his shoulders - which, ultimately, serves just as well as anything. Her warm hands slide over his shoulders and down his arms, and the sound he makes, he doubts she can even entirely hear… but she smiles when she sees the rills flutter and the color intensify at his neck.

The coat falls to the floor behind him, and Shepard turns her attention to the rest of his clothes, and more to the point, his body beneath them.

He hisses in a breath at the way the fabric feels as it slides off his skin; he's so aware of everything now, as heightened as this moment is. The warm press of her palms over his hips, sliding _just_ around to his backside before she stops herself - the warmth of her breath over his erection as she ghosts past, not quite touching, but making him feel her nevertheless - the intoxicating image of her working the fabric loose, and then following it down to finish the job, going to her knees before him….

"Siha," he says, his voice ragged. After she tugs the last thing away, he reaches down and catches her chin in one hand. Gradually he draws her back to her feet. Desire's blown her pupils wide, like she can't drink in enough of him.

And when her hands rise up to splay fingers across his chest, he has to wonder exactly what she's seen in him, too, because something in her entire posture has changed.

They're laid so bare to each other, and standing here on the edge of it all feels so intimate that for a moment they both go still. She just stands there, feeling it as he breathes. Wordless, she lets him draw her closer, and slowly her fingers drift, tracing the color shifts across his body. Thane's own hands settle on her waist again. When one thumb meets the line of a scar, Shepard's breath hitches.

He knows every vulnerability of hers, and she knows that, too. This is where she _has_ to choose.

"Thane," she says, her voice still rough and strained. He can hear the undercurrents of everything she's dammed up, wanting to break loose. "I want…."

He steps a little closer. He can _feel_ the want radiating off of her, but he wants to let her explain.

"I want to feel you," she says at last. "I want to lose myself in you. I want… to stop thinking about everything that's coming, just for tonight…."

His hands lift up to cup her face.

"I want to be with you," she says, her voice cracking. "As long as I possibly can."

There's so much still trapped behind those words that it breaks his heart, but he only murmurs back, "I'm here," and feels her sigh - and with that, he finally bends down to kiss her.

It's like taking a sun into his arms. There's such warmth pressed up against him, the spice of her on his tongue - all these sounds, from the sensitive rasp of skin against skin to the breaths and moans and his own voice saying her name. Power thrums from his hands, sending blue fire licking over her body. She arches into him, an impossible combination of softness and strength. She's so beautiful. And _gods,_ the sound from her lips as her head falls back….

"Please," she gasps, in such a tone that desire stabs through him, too urgent now to ignore. He _can't_ say no.

But he still, with every touch and twist of his fingers, every kiss to drink in her cries, does it gently. The tenderness in it breaks down the last of her walls. And after she shudders around him and comes apart at last, he doesn't let go.

They both fall asleep, eventually, and he's the first to wake. For a few minutes he simply lies there and comes back to himself, then takes a long look at her face, finally relaxed and almost at peace.

Her scars never quite healed after her reconstruction, but when she's with him a while, they seem… fainter, somehow. His fingers trace over one of the jagged marks, quieting the light beneath them. So much rebuilt, so much changed… so much out of her control.

She's never stopped trying to wrest her life back since.

She'll wake soon, and if he knows her, she'll probably protest it and try to eke out a _few_ more minutes, and inevitably she'll look embarrassed about her bed head. "You always look so _composed_ already," she told him once. "It's really not fair." But he finds it oddly charming, really, the way her hair gets tousled in sleep, and the way the quality of her dreams still shows in those oh-so-expressive eyes.

Thane runs his fingertips through a lock of hair at her forehead, loosening a tangle. The slight tug makes her turn. She's starting to wake, he realizes, and the new day will start up soon enough, making her reassemble the armor of who she has to be -

But for now, to his eternal gratitude, he can tell that she's exactly who she _wants_ to be, because when she opens her eyes to meet his, she finally gives him a smile


End file.
